


A willow cabin at your gate

by slightlykylie



Category: Wintle's Wonders - Noel Streatfeild
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 07:42:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12294492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlykylie/pseuds/slightlykylie
Summary: Rachel thinks she's settling into her new life as a successful actress, until Johanna comes and suddenly she's at sea.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onedogtown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onedogtown/gifts).



Rachel had always known she was different. She was a terrible dancer who would be a terrible Wonder, and she hadn’t the least interest in being a good one; she was awkward and bookish and wanted to see a play of Shakespeare’s on her birthday rather than wear a crown.  Amid all the ways she was different, it was hard to see precisely the way this new difference sneaked up on her.  When the Wonders giggled about boys she thought them silly, but then she never giggled much anyway.  When she saw _Twelfth Night_ her gaze was glued to Viola-as-Cesario to the exclusion of everyone else on the stage, but wasn’t she the star, after all?  When Hilary danced in that dreadful talent competition and that one girl sang a comic song dressed as a boy, strolling across the stage with casual, debonair insouciance, Rachel forgot everything else for the moment as she tried to assimilate this new experience, and afterward, even amid her misery over Hilary’s terrible dancing and Aunt Cora’s anger, she wondered if she might visit the camp again with the Wonders, if she might ever see that girl again.  She kept seeing the jaunty tilt of the boater hat across the girl’s forehead, her white-gloved hand as she doffed her cap and twirled her cane.  But she had been a good performer, after all.  Perhaps it was natural to run the performance over and over in one’s mind after she’d left the stage, to try to imagine what she’d be like walking about in the world (Rachel tried to picture her in ordinary girl’s clothing, but somehow in her mind’s eye she could never picture her without that slyly tilted boater hat, her eyes flashing out frankly from under it for a heart-stopping instant before demurely dropping to the ground as a proper girl’s should) -- to feel one’s stomach fluttering nervously as one pictured it. Perhaps all girls felt that way.  But even if they didn’t, Rachel had always been different, and it had always been all right.  Hilary loved her just as she was, Pursey and Uncle Tom and Mrs. Storm made her feel that she’d be all right even if she were different. (Sometimes she wondered about the way she thought of Mrs. Storm, too.  How *much* she thought about her, how entrancing she found the hours they spent together alone before proper school started, how intimate and adrenaline-rush exciting it felt to share the words of Shakespeare and Shaw and Chekhov together. But -- there was always a but -- Mrs. Storm was a brilliant teacher, and so gloriously sympathetic and understanding of Rachel.  It was quite natural, surely, to feel so -- attached.)

Rachel grew slowly, and so did this new, small difference.  There was a Wonder in group two, not at all one of Mrs. Wintle’s most promising dancers, but with a particular self-possessed tilt to her head, a sheen on her nut-brown hair and a flush in her cheeks when she danced hard, that led Rachel’s mind astray sometimes at nights.  She felt in a disorganized way that she wanted to rescue the girl from something, or else be rescued by her -- to have their fates bound up one in each other, to share... something. And Rachel couldn’t help feeling tenderly as she pictured an errant curl of nut-brown hair lying across a flushed cheek, or pictured herself stroking it away, placing it gently behind an ear.  But that girl moved to Bristol with her family shortly after Rachel’s twelfth birthday, and Rachel never saw her again.  Rachel settled back into lessons with Mrs. Storm, feeling anew the pulse and power of Shakespeare’s words in the room between them.

And then -- _Flotsam_.  Rachel’s old life came to an end with the suddenness of a thunderclap.  Everything was a new, heady rush, spinning around her with a speed that made her dizzy.  Vistas undreamt-of gaped before her, leaving her breathless.  First it was _Flotsam_ in London, then press tours and the premiere, then one brief turn in a new play and then the call from Hollywood.  Aunt Cora, who could barely stand to look at her anymore, arranged for Mrs. Storm to travel to California with her for a few months, hired an appropriate chaperon, and did her best to forget for a time that she’d ever had a niece called Rachel.  The single-picture deal became a contract for two more films in various stages of development.  Rachel began to grow used to never being used to anything at all. New people and faces passed through her life so quickly she could barely learn their names.  Rachel was so busy, she had no time for anything but her work, certainly no time to spend pondering that small difference that seemed to have been planted within her like a seed when she was eleven years old.  If it put down roots, she never knew it.  She was a child star growing into adolescence, and everything moved at warp speed, directors clamoring for the little girl the critics called the most captivating young presence since Shirley Temple, but with a gravitas and grace all her own.  There was no time or space for anything else.

Child stars on the cusp of adolescence are one thing in Hollywood, awkward adolescents themselves quite another.  The third of Rachel’s triad of pictures came to a close, and for the moment there were no other offers, but Rachel was quite content.  Hollywood was all well and good, but she missed London, missed Hilary, missed Pursey and Mrs. Storm, who had returned to England when it became clear that Rachel would be in Hollywood for an extended period.  She was a little tired, longing for stability.  She returned to England to find that Aunt Cora’s resentment for her had not attenuated at all in the year and a half that she’d been gone; Dulcie continued to be a starry presence in panto and musical comedy, occasionally in television, but she had not yet gotten a film deal, and Aunt Cora could no longer countenance the idea of housing the orphan niece who, she was certain, had usurped Dulcie’s career.  It was arranged that Rachel should live with a chaperon in her own flat in London, close enough to Aunt Cora’s that Hilary, still working as a Wonder, should be able to live with Rachel and continue her career.  Rachel’s agent told her that there would certainly be further interest in her in the film world a few years down the line, but Rachel felt no pressure on that score; she settled into working in theatre and found a new joy in performing for a live, captive audience, in the smaller, close-knit theatrical world.  She began to pass out of adolescence and into young womanhood, began to settle into her life again, to find who she was and who she wanted to be.  Her agent came to her with a possible picture deal in Hollywood and she turned it down; she had been cast in The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of _Twelfth Night_ , a show she’d loved since she first saw it on her eleventh birthday, as Olivia.  As a child she had learned the role of Viola with Mrs. Storm, the ragged shipwrecked halfling masquerading as a boy.  Now she was Olivia, elegant and aristocratic and charming, an unquestioned beauty with dark braids circling her head like a coronet.  It was a little odd, but not as odd as Rachel might once have found it.  She was growing into herself.

Then Johanna came along, and Rachel was once again at sea.

She met Johanna in the first day of rehearsals for _Twelfth Night_ ; Rachel was running late from a meeting with her agent, and rushed into the theater just as the director had finished speaking to the cast.  Proper rehearsal was to begin with Act I, Scene 5, the first scene in which Olivia appeared, and Rachel was flustered, darting onto the stage for her first scene without having had any time to settle in and prepare.  It was hard for her to find herself in the role, Olivia mired in gloom and haughty reserve in her first scene, draped in mourning, yet exchanging badinage with the Fool and Sir Toby. Rachel felt uneasy, wanting to confer with the director on his feelings about Olivia in these opening scenes, how much of her mourning should be sincere and how much feigned or arising from habit, how archly he wished her to deliver her banter with the men.  What exactly should Olivia be feeling in this particular moment?  


Then Viola walked onstage in the form of Johanna, and in a heartbeat Rachel and Olivia were one.

Rachel knew something of Johanna from a distance; she was only a year or two older than Rachel, and Rachel knew she had had quite considerable success in the theatrical world of London, making a name for herself in England as Rachel made one for herself in America.  But Rachel had never met her in person, or seen her outside of one grainy, blurry newspaper photograph.  The paper hadn’t shown the richness of her honey-colored hair, its individual strands ranging from light blonde to a warm golden-brown, and already cropped close to her head for her role as the cross-dressing Viola.  Its waves, mostly subdued by pomade, cascaded into slight curls at the nape of her neck, with one stray curl falling just over the curve of her ear.  The paper hadn’t shown the depth nor the sparkle of her blue-gray eyes, reminding Rachel of the sea on an overcast day, nor the buttermilk smoothness of her complexion, hued faintly with rose in the cheeks.  Her lashes were long and thick, a shade darker than her golden hair, and they fluttered against her cheek as Viola glanced downward modestly for a moment, then raised her eyes again to meet Rachel’s.  Rachel stared at her, dizzily half-aware of the play, of the role she inhabited.  Olivia had to fall in love with Viola at first sight.  Was that what was happening?  Olivia falling for Viola?  Was that why Rachel felt so strangely?  But if she was so swept up in the role, why did she find it so hard to remember what words came next?  Why couldn’t she tear her eyes from the light limning Johanna’s hair, brightening its highlights until they shone like gold?  Why was the teasing sparkle in those blue-gray eyes making her forget everything she thought she knew?  
  
Johanna had stopped speaking, and a hush had fallen across the theatre.  Rachel groped for her line.  “Speak to me,” she said, her eye now caught on the single curl of hair at Johanna’s ear.  “I shall answer for her.  Your will?”  
  
“Most radiant, exquisite, and unmatchable beauty!” Viola exclaimed, and Rachel felt her heart race; could those words possibly be meant for her?  Johanna’s voice was rather low, mellow-toned, yet charged with life and passion even in these first moments.  Her jaw was firm, her chin small but pronounced, lending credence to her boyish presence. “Whence came you, sir?” Rachel asked, and meant it.

“I can say little more than I have studied...” and they were into the scene, Viola holding forth at length, confidence shimmering through every word, and Olivia speaking little and looking more.  Rachel found that she was discovering Viola anew through Johanna’s performance.  When Rachel had learned the part of Viola, years before, she had found Viola a little nervous, a little unsure, still grieving for the brother she believed to be dead, the deception of her boy’s costume and the confusion of the crossed lines of love weighing on her.  Now she fully understood, for the first time, Viola’s charm and poise and verve, the mellifluous flow of her praise and the eloquence of her petitions, the assurance and resourcefulness of her as she found herself alone in this new country and promptly stepped into the role of a boy to make her way in the world.  How could Olivia not fall in love with her immediately? How could anyone?  “Make me a willow cabin at your gate,” Viola proclaimed, that hoary speech Rachel knew as well as her own name, and yet now she felt the passion of it and shivered before the image of love-lorn Viola, singing songs of unrequited love, hallooing _her_ name to the reverberate hills, making the babbling gossip of the air cry out -- Olivia?  Or Rachel?  She struggled to marshal her thoughts, to remember that Viola pled for Orsino and not for herself, that Olivia did not even see Viola, but Cesario, the boy messenger.  But they seemed one and the same to Rachel; it was hard to think of Viola either as a boy or as a girl in this scene, but rather some queer mixture of the two, boy-girl, dressed to deceive, yet still more wholly him/herself than anyone Rachel had ever met.

Rachel went through the scene feeling as if she were in a dream, inhabiting Olivia entirely as she fended off Orsino’s suit and yet sent her ring to Viola.  “What is decreed must be, and be this so,” she stated, and found her voice trailing off a bit at the end, though before she had always said the line with certainty and resolve: for what was to happen now?

There was a moment’s pause in the theatre as the scene concluded.  “An interesting take,” the director eventually said.  “Rather different from how you ran the scene with me, Rachel.”  


Rachel flushed.  “I’m sorry.  I -- I think I’m still a little flustered, from being late and -- I’m sorry.  I can try it again.”

“No,” the director said, “I think it worked.  There was a -- passion to it that I think you can make work for you.  The reserve we’re used to seeing from Olivia, you left that behind.  I felt quite swept away along with you.”

“I liked it,” Johanna said quietly, and Rachel glanced at her, heart in her throat.

“There’s a new vulnerability there,” the director concluded.  “Just -- don’t take it too far.”

Rachel tried to understand what “too far” could mean now.  She had a suspicion that wherever it was, it was already far behind her. 


	2. Chapter 2

Rehearsals wore on, and Rachel found herself living only for the moments when she was in the theatre -- more than that, living only for the moments that she was with Johanna.  She found a new passion in Olivia that quite astonished the director, yet had to work hard to maintain it in the later part of the play, when Olivia swapped Viola out for Sebastian as easily as swapping a pair of shoes.  The boy playing Sebastian was quite good, really, and yet Rachel knew that if Shakespeare had seen Johanna in the role of Viola the play could never have ended as it did, for who in the world could mistake any pale male imitation for the vitality and ardor that was Johanna-as-Viola?  Outside of rehearsal time, outside of their roles as Olivia and Viola, Rachel was almost afraid to talk to Johanna.  She felt as though the fervor searing through her blood whenever she was around Johanna must show right through her skin, that Johanna must be able to see at a glance how out-of-control Rachel’s emotions were.  At first she was as quiet and awkward around Johanna as she had used to be in her days as a bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping in the Wonders, flinching under Aunt Cora’s eye, which discovered something new that was wrong with her at every glance.  But outside of rehearsal, though Johanna’s poise and verve never deserted her, as much a part of her as her eyes or hair, Johanna was quick to laugh, her low voice friendly and gentle in conversation.  Rachel began to know her, her engaging wit and sense of humor, but with a sincerity and thoughtfulness underlying it. She took her work as an actress very seriously and loved Shakespeare quite as much as Rachel did, with the same love stretching back into childhood.  They found to their mutual delight that they had seen the same production of _Twelfth Night_ at the Old Vic when Rachel had been eleven and Johanna twelve, that they had discovered their particular love for this play in the same way and at the same time.  They both remembered the highlights from the production, laughing over the hilarious excesses of the man who had played Malvolio, strutting around in his yellow stockings and crossed garters. Both of them agreed, glancing around rather guiltily to make sure they wouldn’t be overheard, that the man playing Malvolio in their current production simply couldn’t compare.

“But in other ways I think we’re better,” Johanna said, the two of them sitting in Johanna’s dressing room one day, having finished eating lunch together and now deep in conversation about their experience of _Twelfth Night_ all those years ago. Rachel nodded, silently thinking that Johanna was more perfect as Viola than anyone else in the world could possibly be.  Then Johanna met Rachel’s eyes squarely.  “Your Olivia is extraordinary,” she said softly.  “I never imagined there was -- so much in her.”

Rachel’s heart was beating fast, too fast.  “Oh, don’t be silly,” she said automatically, twisting her fingers together.

“I’m not,” Johanna said, with a vehemence that startled Rachel.  “There’s such depth to her, as you play her. It’s not a play about silly confusions and mix-ups, not when I’m playing it with you.  Olivia comes out of the darkness of mourning for her brother and stumbles across love, and it -- illuminates everything. It’s not a joke or a game, it’s just -- real.”

_It’s real when I’m with you.  It’s real when you’re the one I love, before Sebastian wanders in and ruins everything, before I’m supposed to pretend that anyone could replace you, that anyone else could be you.  There’s only you, only you, and you’re in every moment, every breath that I take --_

“The play -- it’s -- new to me too, now,” Rachel said awkwardly, trying to shut down the rush of emotion flooding through her, the words that wanted to spill out.  “I -- never felt this way before.  About it,” she tacked on.  _About anyone.  Anyone but you._

Johanna locked eyes with Rachel, held her gaze for a long moment.  Rachel caught her breath; Johanna seemed to be leaning in.  Hypnotized, Rachel watched that curl fall over her ear again, and fought madly against the urge to raise her hand to it, to replace it gently behind her ear, then to let her hand stray to Johanna’s cheek, to caress her face, to --

A sudden burst of laughter behind them, and the clattering of a door in the hallway; lunch was over, and the other actors were returning to the theater.  Rachel recognized the voice of John Garland, the play’s Orsino, coming down the hall.  She glanced back at Johanna, eyes wide, feeling horribly exposed; Johanna was flushed, looking down at her lap, their moment broken.  Rachel hastily moved a couple inches back, terrified of what anyone might see if they stuck their head through the door.  She felt as if her crime must be tattooed across her face in blood-red ink.

_I’m in love_ , Rachel realized, fully, finally. _I’m in love with Johanna Kincaid, and it’s glorious, and it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done._

\------

The papers began to link Johanna with John romantically.  Rachel was in hell.

John was more famous than either Johanna or Rachel in the world of theatre, several years older than both of them, an actor with a great stage presence and sometimes, it seemed, an even greater presence in the gossip columns.  Tremendously handsome and something of a playboy, he had moved to London from America several years before and had since been rumored to have seduced half of his leading ladies, with hordes of eager young women waiting at the stage door for him each night.  Before _Twelfth Night_ Rachel had suspected rather boredly that the gossip columnists paired him up with any woman he’d been seen talking to for more than five minutes just to sell their papers, but now -- oh, it must be true, it must.  Olivia loved Viola and Viola loved Orsino; and Rachel loved Johanna, so Johanna must love John.  He was so good-looking and so charming, and he was, after all, a man.  Nothing could be more perfect than the two of them, and Rachel moved through the world feeling like a live coal was burning in her breast day and night.

She began to be unable to watch the scenes Johanna and John shared, convinced their love scenes were grounded in the same reality that made Olivia’s love for Viola seem so fresh and vital to those who watched.   She attributed flirtatious motives to every word Johanna and John exchanged, and when they weren’t talking she was glancing madly between the two of them, waiting for them to exchange significant looks.  And she was sure she intercepted plenty of them -- from John to Johanna.  Part of Rachel thought that Johanna treated John more or less as she treated most people, with humor but a slight reserve, but then jealousy rose up to claim her and she was certain every light laugh Johanna shared with John was pregnant with significance.  Johanna _must_ love him, the suave lady-killer whom the papers proclaimed one of the most eligible bachelors in the city.   She would go through this play with him and then out into the world beyond with him at her side, his arm around her waist, his lips at her ear.  He would possess her completely, in full view of the admiring throngs, and Rachel would be left behind, clutching a dog-eared copy of _Twelfth Night_ whose meaning had changed forever the first time she had laid eyes on Johanna.  Rachel was so consumed with envy that she found it difficult to talk civilly to John when he began making conversation with her around the edges of their scenes.  She knew why, of course; he knew she was friends with Johanna, and he wanted to insinuate himself into Johanna’s circle, perhaps to have Rachel “talk him up” to Johanna when he was finally ready to make a real move.  She thought he was probably waiting for the premiere of the play, to capitalize on the publicity that would be attendant on the opening. In the days leading up to the opening, with all of this burning inside her, she played Olivia with more passion and abandon than ever, then went home at night and wept bitterly into her pillow. She knew John _must_ make his move soon.

And make it he did.  It was the night of the dress rehearsal, the night before the official opening, and Rachel had stumbled through the rehearsal in a haze, grateful to the months of dedication and investment that allowed her to play her role as though nothing were amiss when all the while she was certain that Orsino must claim his Viola tonight.  She heard the laughter of the small by-invitation-only audience as if they were on the other side of a glass wall, only feeling _real_ when Johanna was onstage with her, meeting her line for line, gaze for gaze.  At the end she married Sebastian and Orsino announced he would marry Viola and the audience sighed happily and applauded and Rachel felt their eyes on Johanna and John together, the perfect couple, and wondered if she could live until she got home and could cry her rage and grief into her pillow once more.

She was in her dressing room, barely hearing the laughter and conversation of the rest of the cast as they celebrated the success of the dress rehearsal in the hallways around her, smearing cold cream across her face and hoping to be able to leave before anyone tried to drag her into the celebration, when she felt a presence in the door of the dressing room and glanced up to see John there.  Seething internally -- why did it have to be _him?_ \-- she managed to flash him a quick, taut smile, then looked back into the mirror, wiping the cream from her face.  “Rachel,” he said easily.  “Can I have a word?”

“Of course,” Rachel said mechanically, capping her cold cream and putting it back in her makeup case, hunting around on the dressing table for her brush.

“Great dress rehearsal,” he said.  “The audience loved you.”

“And you,” she said automatically, and tried to paste on a smile, pulling bobby pins from her hair and laying them on the dresser.

“Hey. Can you give me a minute?  Leave those alone?” he asked, and then casually laid his hand across hers, settling them together on the dresser.  Rachel froze, then gaped up at him.

“What?” she said stupidly, seeing peripherally a loosened bobby pin hanging at the edge of her vision, which she couldn’t retrieve with her hand trapped against the table.

He flashed his thousand-watt smile at her and tilted his head, so a few loose waves of hair fell across his forehead.  Rachel noted how calculated the move was, how rakish and debonair his smile had become, and fought off a mad desire to burst out laughing.  His green eyes sought out hers, his gaze electric with an absurd parody of sensuality, but all Rachel could see was that one dangling bobby pin out of the corner of her eye.  “There’s plenty of cameras out there at the stage door,” he said, and Rachel’s brow furrowed with confusion.  “Be nice to walk out together and give them some pictures worth taking, huh?”

This time Rachel really did laugh, a short, gargling sound that caught in her throat and made John look curiously at her.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yes -- I -- _what?”_

“Well, it’s not just for the cameras,” he said seriously.  “I like you, Rachel.  You and me -- we make sense.”

_This makes less sense than anything I’ve ever heard in my entire life._ “You think that,” she said, her mind reeling.

“Well, sure,” he said, looking a little puzzled.  “I mean, you’re the ingénue, right?” _I’m the *what?*  You think I’m the *what?!*_ “You’re plenty good-looking,” he said.  “You know that.  And you’re a name to watch in the theatre.  What you’ve done with this role -- the critics will notice.  You’re a star in the making, Rachel.”  He squeezed her hand.  “You belong with a star.”

“But I thought -- Johanna --“

“Johanna!” He laughed.  “She’s all right, but nothing that can touch you.  Give me a real brunette beauty any day over those empty-headed blondes. I’d be bored with her in a week.  You’re the real deal, Rachel.”

He leaned in, his gaze boring into hers and sultrier than ever, clearly expecting her eyes to flutter closed and her head to fall back. Fury boiled up in her -- whether more at his presumption or at what he’d said about Johanna, she’d never know.  Her brows went down and her hand went up, and next thing she knew she’d dealt him a slap across the face that left a white hand-print emblazoned across his cheek.  She watched, aghast, as it immediately began to fill in with red.

“I’m -- I’m -- sorry --“ she managed to say in a garbled sort of a way, now pressing her hand to her mouth; it still tingled where she’d struck him.  “I -- didn’t mean --“

He gave her one dumbfounded look, then, as his bemusement began to dissolve into anger, his jaw hardened and he pivoted and swept from the room.  Rachel fell back into her chair, the room spinning around her.  _What_ had just happened?!

She heard a noise at the door and jumped, swiveling around, certain John had come back.  Instead she saw Johanna framed in the doorway, confusion written across her face.  “What in the world was that all about?” she asked, coming into the room, the door falling closed behind her.  “John looked angry enough to spit tacks.  And did something happen to his face?”

“I did, I suppose,” Rachel gasped.  “I -- I hit him.”

“You _hit_ him?  What?  Why?”

_Because he insulted you._ “He -- I don’t know -- he -- wanted me to -- I suppose -- be his -- his girlfriend?” Rachel said, still feeling bewildered.  “And he -- I think he just assumed --“

“And you turned him down?” Johanna asked slowly.  Rachel couldn’t understand this; surely Johanna should be laughing by now, or else appalled by Rachel’s temper.  What was this look on her face, this sudden intensity, as if her world depended on Rachel’s answer?

“If slapping him across the face is turning him down,” Rachel gasped, and at that Johanna did let out a short breath of laughter, but her face turned serious again almost immediately.  “I don’t know -- he called me his ingénue,” she said, picking a point at random.

“He called _you_ his _ingénue?_ ” Johanna said in disbelief.  “Rachel Lennox, our grande dame in the making?  The finest Shakespearean actress to grace the stage in a generation?  An _ingénue?_ ”

“Is -- is that what you think of me?” Rachel asked, still struggling to find some sense in the world, in this conversation, in the hot light burning in Johanna’s eyes.

“Of course!  It’s what you are!  How he could think --“

Rachel felt herself wilting in the heat of Johanna’s anger. “I don’t know, but oh, Johanna, I’m so sorry --“

“Sorry?  What for?”

“For -- for how it all turned out.  I know --“ Rachel had no idea what she knew anymore, but she’d started the sentence and now had to finish it somehow -- “I know you and he were -- well, if you perhaps hoped --“

“You think I’ve been interested in _John_. John _Garland_.  The man with a head the size of Big Ben.  That John?”

“Well --“

“Rachel!  I can barely stand to share a scene with him!”

“I didn’t know,” Rachel said dumbly.  Johanna stepped closer to her.

“I hate playing these love scenes with him.  He’s so smug, both as Orsino and in life, convinced every girl nearby must be ready to swoon into his arms, and all the time I’m with him I’m thinking how little sense it makes, for Viola, for _anyone_ to want him when there’s -- when there’s --“ 

“When there’s what?” Rachel asked, her voice dropping into the sudden silence, feeling disembodied, as though there was nothing in the world except the snapping heat of Johanna’s eyes.

“Not what,” Johanna whispered.  “Who.”

Rachel’s mouth formed into an O around the word “Who?”, but no sound came out. She took a step toward Johanna just as Johanna took another step toward her.  They were barely an inch apart now.  She could feel Johanna’s breath on her face, feel the warmth radiating from Johanna’s body, smell the light scent of her shampoo.  She closed her eyes just as Johanna’s face dipped to hers.

At the first meeting of their lips heat exploded through Rachel, shocking her to her pores.  Her body responded purely instinctively, her lips parting as she delved into the kiss, one of her hands moving to Johanna’s waist, the other into her hair.  They kissed and kissed until Rachel was breathless and half-reeling, and yet she couldn’t bear to break it, couldn’t bear to have this sweetness end.  When the kiss finally broke she slumped against Johanna, her head falling to rest against Johanna’s shoulder.  She could hear Johanna’s breath in her ear, quick and shallow, then slowing. One of Johanna’s hands came up, gently pushing a sheaf of Rachel’s hair over her shoulder, incidentally dislodging that silly bobby pin that had been dangling there all along.

“I -- I can’t believe -- it could be me,” Rachel managed finally, her arms firmly knotted around Johanna.  Johanna laughed huskily.

“I can’t believe you could think there could be anyone else,” she said.

“I feel like -- like the play should have a different ending tomorrow.  Now that we know -- now that _I_ know --”

“It won’t.”  Johanna planted a light kiss by Rachel’s ear. “Tomorrow Olivia will marry Sebastian, and Viola will promise to marry Orsino.  The play won’t change.  But we write our own life story, Rachel.  Starting from tonight, we’re writing our story together.”

“Oh,” Rachel breathed, and found Johanna’s lips again.


End file.
